52 ox Goethe's scientific eesearches. 



into their connection without ever having to trust to any 

 thing but our senses. This demand of his looks most 

 attractive, but is essentially wrong in principle. For a 

 natural phenomenon is not considered in physical science 

 to be fully explained until you have traced it back to the 

 ultimate forces which are concerned in its production and 

 its maintenance. Now, as we can never become cognizant 

 of forces qua forces, but only of their effects, we are com- 

 pelled in every explanation of natural phenomena to 

 leave the sphere of sense, and to pass to things which are 

 not objects of sense, and are defined only by abstract con- 

 ceptions. When we find a stove warm, and then observe 

 that a fire is burning in it, we say, though somewhat in- 

 accurately, that the former sensation is explained by the 

 latter. But in reality this is equivalent to saying, we 

 are always accustomed to find heat where fire is burning ; 

 now, a fire is burning in the stove, therefore we shall find 

 heat there. Accordingly we bring our single fact under 

 a more general, better known fact, rest satisfied with it, 

 and call it falsely an explanation. Evidently, however, 

 the generality of the observation does not necessarily imply 

 an insight into causes ; such an insight is only obtained 

 when we can make out what forces are at work in the 

 fire, and how the effects depend upon them. 



But this step into the region of abstract conceptions, 

 which must necessarily be taken, if we wish to penetrate 

 to the causes of phenomena, scares the poet away. In 

 writing a poem he has been accustomed to look, as it 

 were, right into the subject, and to reproduce his intui- 

 tion without formulating any of the steps that led him to 

 it. And his success is proportionate to the vividness of 

 the intuition. Such is the fashion in which he would 

 have Nature attacked. But the natural philosopher in- 

 sists on transporting him into a world of invisible atoms 

 and movements, of attractive and repulsive forces, whose 



